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Saturday, June 13, 2015

Tash's Pick of the Week: Batman #41

Tash’s Pick of the Week: Batman #41
Written By Scott Snyder
Pencils By Greg Capullo
Inks By Danny Miki
Colors By Fco Plascencia

Batman! Dead,you say? Didn’t see that coming. Unless, you know, you ended up reading one of the “News” sites. You know, site that spoil book and tells you the 100k or under is healthy sales for a comic book. Everything is fine. No need to reach out to new readers. Ahem. Batman #41 is the beginning of a bold new direction for Batman. Well, you know, until we get another “soft reboot” and everything goes back to normal. It’ll happen. But until then we get the aftermath of The Joker killing Batman from the last issue. Oh, and everyone in Gotham knows that Batman is dead and the people who run “Powers Indutries” thinks that Gotham still needs a hero and start recruiting cops to attempt to take over the mantle of the Batman.

So Jim Gordon gets talked into becoming the New Batman. He’s wearing some weird Bat Armour, which can also be turned into different colors with an iPad. Fancy, yet shows that it can be hacked by Wi-fi. Or not. But I can dream, can’t I? So Jim Gordon works his butt off and gets in shape and boom, he’s the new Batman. You know, minus the money. But Gordon does have the same stupid ass haircut that Bruce Wayne was rocking when he was going through the whole “Zero Year” deal.

So there’s this giant energy monster turning little Cuba in Gotham upside down. So the new Batman in his metal suit takes to the streets to stop him. He’s also got helpers on the bat radio to help him. Think the guys at STAR labs on the awesome Flash TV show on the CW (Watch it, it’s great!) Using his detective skills to deduce that a former MLB baseball player lives in little Cuba and he’s got lots of money in his safe. But the safes were design by Wayne Industires. So that mean’s that nobody other than the owner is getting in. So the villain of this issue is using energy monster as a diversion. Batgordon puts all this together and leaves the Batman armour to fight the monster and punches the bad guy out.

I’ll say that I figured this would suck, but hey, it was kind of fun to read. It was an interesting dynamic with Gordon being the new Dark Knight. Kudo’s to Snyder for taking this idea and not blowing it. I also liked how Gordon also said the new Batman uniform looks like bunny ear. I guess Gordon was on the Internet when the cover first hit the web and asked Capullo “What the hell is that, man?” Dan Didio was seen in the background giving the thumbs up! If there’s a gimmick, then that guy is all for it. Quick, DC, don’t remind him about the die cast covers or those thing will be back in time for the new year. Aw, I kid. I expected this issue to be awful but I really did have fun reading it and still love Greg Capullo’s art which meshes really well with the whole creative team. As long as it’s this good, I’ll keep buying.